Product description

Ancient Cities surveys the cities of the Ancient Near East, Egypt, and the Greek and Roman worlds from the perspectives of archaeology and architectural history, bringing to life the physical world of ancient city dwellers by concentrating on evidence recovered from archaeological excavations. Urban form is the focus: the physical appearance and overall plans of the cities, their architecture and natural topography, and the cultural and historical contexts in which they flourished. Attention is also paid to non-urban features such as religious sanctuaries and burial grounds, places and institutions that were a familiar part of the city dweller's experience. Objects or artifacts that represented the essential furnishings of everyday life are discussed, such as pottery, sculpture, wall paintings, mosaics and coins. Ancient Cities is unusual in presenting this wide range of Old World cultures in such comprehensive detail, giving equal weight to the Preclassical and Classical periods, and in showing the links between these ancient cultures.
User-friendly features include: * use of clear and accessible language, assuming no previous background knowledge * lavishly illustrated with over 300 line drawings, maps, and photos * historical summaries, further reading arranged by topic, plus a consolidated bibliography and comprehensive index * new to the second edition: a companion website with an interactive timeline, chapter summaries, study questions, illustrations and a glossary of archaeological and historical terms. Visit the website at http://cw.routledge.com/textbooks/9780415498647/ In this second edition, Charles Gates has comprehensively revised and updated his original text, and Neslihan Yilmaz has reworked her acclaimed illustrations. Readers and lecturers will be delighted to see a new chapter on Phoenician cities in the first millennium BC, and new sections on Gobekli Tepe, the sensational Neolithic sanctuary; Sinope, a Greek city on the Black Sea coast; and cities of the western Roman Empire.
With its comprehensive presentation of ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern cities, its rich collection of illustrations, and its new companion website, Ancient Cities will remain an essential textbook for university and high school students across a wide range of archaeology, ancient history, and ancient Near Eastern, Biblical, and classical studies courses.

Author information

Charles Gates is senior lecturer of archaeology and art history at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. His research focuses on Minoan, Mycenaean and Greek art and archaeology. Since 1993 he has participated in the excavations at Kinet Hoyuk (Turkey), a Bronze and Iron Age port city in the north-east Mediterrean.

Table of contents

List of Illustrations Preface Preface to the second edition Introduction PART 1: CITIES OF THE NEAR EAST AND THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN: NEOLITHIC, BRONZE AGE, AND IRON AGE 1. Neolithic Towns and Villages in the Near East 2. Early Sumerian Cities 3. Mesopotamian Cities in the Late Third and Second Millennia BC 4. Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization 5. Egypt of the Pyramids 6. Egyptian Cities, Temples, and Tombs of the Second Millennium BC 7. Aegean Bronze Age Towns and Cities 8. Anatolian Bronze Age Cities: Troy and Hattusha 9. Cypriots, Canaanites, and Levantine Trading Cities of the Late Bronze Age 10. Near Eastern Cities in the Iron Age 11. Phoenician and Punic Cities PART 2: GREEK CITIES 12. Early Greek City-States of the Iron Age (Eleventh--Seventh Centuries BC) 13. Archaic Greek Cities, I: The Doric and Ionic Orders of Greek Architecture, and East Greek Cities to the Ionian Revolt 14. Archaic Greek Cities, II: Athens and Sparta 15. Greek Sanctuaries: Delphi and Olympia 16. Athens in the Fifth Century BC 17. Greek Cities and Sanctuaries in the Late Classical Period 18. Hellenistic Cities PART 3: CITIES OF ANCIENT ITALY AND THE ROMAN EMPIRE 19. Greek and Etruscan Cities in Italy 20. Rome: From its Origins to the End of the Republic 21. Rome in the Age of Augustus 22. Italy outside the Capital: Pompeii and Ostia 23. Rome from Nero to Hadrian: Imperial Patronage and Architectural Revolution 24. Roman Provincial Cities 25. Late Antique Transformations: Rome, Jerusalem, and Constantinople in the Age of Constantine Illustration sources Glossary Further Reading Bibliography Index